Windows CI will be turned down on August 31st, 2023

[yanavlasov]

Envoy has lost all Windows maintainers. Envoy Windows build is slowly bitrotting with failing tests just being disabled. Windows toolchain has not been updated for some time and currently blocks update of several dependencies (i.e. CEL) or transition to C++20.

Due to lack of maintenance Windows CI will be turned down on August 31st, 2023. This means that new changes will not be built or tested on Windows platform and Windows docker images will no longer be published.

The last major release supporting Windows is 1.27

[yanavlasov]

CC @envoyproxy/envoy-maintainers

[phlax]

+1 the windows ci is now the most flakey part of ci, and is hard to optimize or debug

more often than not resolving windows issues is the blocker to updating/fixing stuff, so mho is that we either need someone who can resolve these issues in a timely fashion or we should drop support

cc @envoyproxy/windows-dev

[sunjayBhatia]

Hey all 👋🏽 I'm no longer working on this area at VMware unfortunately, I'll ask around though to see if we can get some more resources

We should probably reassess the members of the windows-dev github team to see who is still active/relevant

[davinci26]

Hey same, I am no longer working at Microsoft and I am in the group of folks without access to a Windows machine :( I don't think I can actively help on that front right now

Two cents is that we should flag this to msft folks and maybe a team there has the capacity/motivation to support

[phlax]

another windows fail trying to upgrade (#29211):

ERROR: C:/source/source/exe/BUILD:25:16: Linking source/exe/envoy-static.exe failed: (Exit 4098): link.exe failed: error executing command (from target //source/exe:envoy-static) 
  cd /d C:/build/tmp/execroot/envoy
  SET LIB=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.29.30133\lib\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\lib\10.0.22000.0\ucrt\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\lib\10.0.22000.0\um\x64
    SET PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.29.30133\bin\HostX64\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\Common7\IDE\VC\VCPackages;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\bin\Roslyn;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\Common7\Tools\devinit;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.22000.0\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\\MSBuild\Current\Bin;C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\Common7\IDE\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\Common7\Tools\;;C:\Windows\system32
    SET PWD=/proc/self/cwd
    SET TEMP=C:\Windows\Temp
    SET TMP=C:\Windows\Temp
    SET TMPDIR=C:\Windows\Temp
    SET USE_CLANG_CL=
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.29.30133\bin\HostX64\x64\link.exe @bazel-out/x64_windows-opt/bin/source/exe/envoy-static.exe-2.params
# Configuration: 168cc5ce790f4c81bd5475ccf1381a373dad6d534fc549080129bc199cb66c64
# Execution platform: @envoy_build_tools//toolchains:rbe_windows_msvc_cl_platform
   Creating library bazel-out\x64_windows-opt\bin\source\exe\envoy-static.lib and object bazel-out\x64_windows-opt\bin\source\exe\envoy-static.exp
LINK : warning LNK4098: defaultlib 'MSVCRT' conflicts with use of other libs; use /NODEFAULTLIB:library
LINK : error LNK1218: warning treated as error; no output file generated
Target //source/exe:envoy-static failed to build
INFO: Elapsed time: 415.324s, Critical Path: 252.05s
INFO: 7655 processes: 7240 remote cache hit, 414 internal, 1 remote.
INFO: Streaming build results to: https://source.cloud.google.com/results/invocations/f976abe8-57af-488a-8df4-634fa3f5d148
Deleting service account key file...
##[error]Bash exited with code '1'.
Finishing: Run Windows msvc-cl CI

https://dev.azure.com/cncf/envoy/_build/results?buildId=146922&view=logs&j=4afecb4c-71c7-5b5c-ab99-a70ed4c927ad&t=4cd2fc51-3314-5d69-4df3-f765ae0c08dc&l=79500

[akshaysngupta]

Updating here - me and some other folks at msft are helping with keeping windows ci healthy. Dependencies and lack of caching in windows ci are the main pain points right now.

[dimo414]

@akshaysngupta what's the status here? #33751 (comment) suggests Windows has in fact been abandoned?

[dimo414]

It sounds like it was decided to end Windows support as scheduled despite @akshaysngupta's efforts, @phlax should this issue be updated and closed?

[jmarantz]

Just to clarify -- I don't think anyone in the Envoy community objects to having Envoy work on Windows; but the overhead and cost with running the CI workload as part of the normal github flow was too high, and there wasn't enough support or consistent engagement from the windows community to make it go smoothly.

[dimo414]

Yes understood, and sorry if I was coming across as critical or judgemental. I appreciate the difficulty of supporting Windows well, and choosing to sunset providing that support instead of letting it drag along makes sense. I'm just trying to follow along with the decisions and current state, since as of Aug. 31st the implication in the comments of this bug was that Windows support wasn't being sunsetted after all.